Just a heads up, some stuff like “favorite movie, cartoon, hentai- err… … eh sure, hentai” will probably go under my radar because it’s sort of a generic question (no offense), so I’ll concentrate on questions that catch my eye.

Additionally, NO ONE SINGLE MEMBER SPEAKS ON BEHALF OF ALL OF CSS. WE ALL HAVE OUR OWN INDIVIDUAL OPINIONS AND LIFE EXPERIENCES. It just so happens that many seem to overlap between our members. :3 That being said, I am only speaking as myself in any and all replies.

If you got stuck in an infinite repeating time loop, would you rather it be a short loop (a year to a few years) or a long loop (your entire life span)?

Yeesh… that’s the definition of Hell isn’t it? A “Groundhogs Day” scenario would get boring FAST, where as having full knowledge of your choices and mistakes would at least give you thousands and thousands of life-choices that you can complete until you are Emperor of the Earth.

However, anything genuinely “infinite” would be fun for the first… million times? But what about the millions and millions after it? What about the 10^100 (Googlol-th) time? You can eventually literally do everything humanly possible, in every conceivable combination… and then what?

Aww, senpai noticed you KorgerKor. Well here are some of the questions I would like to ask (not that I’m expecting a reply).

1. What do you wish your fans to do if they want to help CCS (bar giving money to Patreon for those of us more or less strapped of cash)? It could be inferred from the Q&A video, asking for topics seems to be a more or less futile endeavor, making an ocean of fecal matter with only a few diamonds (most of which you don’t have the gem crafting skill to refine anyways ^-^). Maybe you could ask for relevant articles or out source some research. Maybe make a out call for fan art, like South Park asking for Yaoi of Tweek & Craig. It might feel a touch shady, but fans love to help out & they become more loyal from the skunk cost fallacy (a tool many politicians use to guarantee votes, cause if they work towards getting you elected, it’s a guarantee vote in the ballot box).

2. What do you guys do to get the CCS name out there? Have you tried networking (talking about doing interviews/ causal discussions) with other YouTube channels to get you name out there? Why aren’t you utilizing Twitter more?

4. Why don’t you shamelessly promote the CCS website & CCS forums more? I like the current forum members, but the more the merrier.

I’d say that those three questions are related. We prefer not to push our content in everyone’s faces as we’re a subjective party. The BEST thing our fans can do, even including Patreon help, is to simply share our content with people and other communities that would enjoy it. Not saying find an MLP troll-den and say “Check it out! You hate MLP and this video tells Bronies off!” but if you have friends with similar interests, promote the CCS videos via email links, Facebook posts, Tweets, or whatever. 🙂

Basically, our hands-off approach kind of bites us in the ass as far as viewers, but I’d say that we legitimately have a much stronger fanbase because of it. People who understand our way of thinking and genuinely want to hear more vs having an ad shoved in their face.

But we will make more mention of the forums in future AH, WildCards ANNNNNNDDDDD the new Wasted Effort episode.

In the meantime, Kenny and The Fuboo want to get back to GameGlitch Radio, but they’re unsure whether their show is hitting the mark. I’m sure some support and feedback would be appreciated!:

5. Will the CCS forums ever get a delete button so when my potato internet makes me post the same thing twice, I can delete the duplicate? Maybe you just need to find a reliable moderator for that if you’re worried of people deleting important context to a thread.

We used to moderate the forums in our old site, but it took a lot of our time out of making content so we’re taking a more hands-off approach this time around. We would consider a moderator, but A) we’re still kind of small, and B) I’m a paranoid, untrusting megalomaniac when it comes to the CCS site. But we’ll see 🙂

I might as well put down a few questions too while I’m at it.
1. What has been the hardest thing when it has come to making videos? The Audio, the time, or some other things?

Excellent question! Obviously, the absolute hardest thing to do is to take 60 minutes of conversation, and play triage to edit it down to a rock-solid ~10-15min audio file. This is, without a doubt, the most time-consuming part of the editing process because Max and I will go back and forth for days (if not longer) saying “Oh do we need this?”, “We HAVE to have this”, and “but to have that, we have to set up the joke with what’s said before.” P.I.T.A but ultimately rewarding.

Second worst thing is finding the right images to convey an opinion. Sure, you can jump on Google Images and find something close to what you want. But, if you have a scene in your head for either an animated skit, OR even a still image, I can spend hours looking for one… perfect… image.

I’m not opposed to the idea, but how do we choose which ones to shout out? Perhaps a low-ball Patreon “Sponsorship” like Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast? Otherwise, how do we control the floodgates if everybody wants a shout-out?

3. What do you think of the idea of the fans making their own Cheshire cat studios podcast for you guys to animate and put on the channel? (I think it would be a great idea since the fans would do most of the work)

The animation is really the hardest part of the podcast, and if we’re going to spend days/weeks/months animating a podcast, it’s likely going to be our own videos (unless we’re paid bookoo bucks to do otherwise). To get the right ebb and flow of making video skits, Max and I have to be invested in the conversation itself, and if we’re not into the conversation, we won’t take it to the next tier. There’s about a dozen unedited audio podcasts we’ve scrapped because Max and I couldn’t think of anything funny to do with them.

Now if you want to do the exact opposite and animate one of our audio-only clips as a fan project, I’d say “be our guest”:

Have you considered looking for animators on sites like Youtube or Newgrounds to further add animation team members to CCS? Since some of this artists have a ton of great talent that can boost production on animating the CCS Video podcasts and Wasted Effort (how awesome would be if Harry Patridge or Vivziepop joined the CCS animation team).

I think that you and Cinemax should make a sort of a film, game or series review show but with your CCS style of subjective criticism and research that would stand out from the rest. After all, you did great review articles on the site and I would love to see or read more reviews from you. Would you do it?

Have you considered looking for animators on sites like Youtube or Newgrounds to further add animation team members to CCS? Since some of this artists have a ton of great talent that can boost production on animating the CCS Video podcasts and Wasted Effort (how awesome would be if Harry Patridge or Vivziepop joined the CCS animation team).

Actually, if we got a chance to work with some talented animators like HappyHarry or OneyNG, we wouldn’t squander this opportunity by making them draw some skits for Wasted Effort or something equally trivial. Instead, we’d go full steam ahead with some of our original projects that we’ve kept on the backburner for years and try to turn them into legitimate story-driven web series.

Of course, to celebrate the occasion, as well as to create more content for our YT channel, we’d probably record an After Hours together — or something along those lines. But that’d just be a byproduct or our team-up, not the collobaration itself.

Actually, if we got a chance to work with some talented animators like HappyHarry or OneyNG, we wouldn’t squander this opportunity by making them draw some skits for Wasted Effort or something equally trivial. Instead, we’d go full steam ahead with some of our original projects that we’ve kept on the backburner for years and try to turn them into legitimate story-driven web series.

That sounds fucking badass. Although, what kind of web-series are you gonna make?

Well, these next two questions are specifically for you, LaughingMan (sorry, but I’m gonna pick on you lol).

1. Since you’re the only PIG fan I know/talked to: What are your favorite albums of Mr. Watts?

PIG? Watts? What are you-
*looks at shirt*
Oh right…

Well, this is sort of like Sophie’s Choice, now isn’t it? I like all his albums for different reasons (specifically certain songs on certain albums). But Sinsation was my first album and I like quite a bit of it. Pigmata stands out especially for Arbor Vitate. However, if I had to choose which album has the strongest songs, I’d have to say that Wrecked is a good one :3 That, and all of Watt’s contributions on KMFDM’s “Nihil” album really made it stand out as a gem. But that’s why I like KMFDM/PIG: They all (used to) have a unique sound to each album (compare KMFDM’s Goth-club sound of “NIHIL” to the metal powerhouse “XTORT”)

You’ve mentioned you are a fiction writer and I’m curious about what you write outside of CCS (short stories, type of genres, literary influences, etc.).

I’m a sucker for horror, especially Existential Horror. Right now I have a massive boner for Thomas Ligotti. Recently wrapped up “My Work Is Not Yet Done” and I’m moving on to his surreal “Theatro Grottesco”. I am also a fan of Lovecraft and Poe, naturally. But some good horror writers worth checking out are: Arthur Machen, Clark Ashton Smith, Algernon Blackwood, Lord Dunsany, M.R. James, Robert W Chambers, Ambrose Bierce, and J. B. Priestley (“Benighted”). Other writers worth their salt include dream-weaver Neil Gaiman, witty satirist Terry Pratchett (specifically “Going Postal”), detective tour de force Dashiell Hammett, and of course the great Harlan Ellison.

I’m nearly done with Gary Whitta’s (The Book of Eli, TellTale’s The Walking Dead) “Abomination”, which was sadly very predictable, had a weak villain, and had far too much fantasy/magic for my tastes. I really hate fantasy because it’s full of Deus Ex Machina moments where a hero is trapped until he uses some supernatural “get-out-of-death-free-card” to get him out of a tight jam.

In an act of CCS-brand hypocricy, my magnum opus (150 pages so far, barely making a dent in my outline) is a dark fantasy. And by dark I mean “black hole” dark, heavily inspired by Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce, and Robert W Chambers. In college I once wrote a 350 page Silent Hill-like story that, sadly, didn’t have an ending worth a crap, so it’s been scrapped. Luckily the new story is flushed out beginning to end. But right now I’m writing something for CCS with CineMax and Katie_B for one of our secret projects. A fun little story that struck me like a lightning bolt one night, and I’ve been plugging at it here and there ever since.

For anyone who would like a heads up from a writer who really has never FINISHED anything, here are a few resources that helped me out a bit:

I really hate fantasy because it’s full of Deus Ex Machina moments where a hero is trapped until he uses some supernatural “get-out-of-death-free-card” to get him out of a tight jam.

Yeah, I know what you mean. I don’t want to shit on the genre or anything (source of literary inspiration for my young self) but sometimes magic tropes get old. I like more “unique” interpretations of magic/supernatural phenomenon.

In an act of CCS-brand hypocricy, my magnum opus (150 pages so far, barely making a dent in my outline) is a dark fantasy.

Reminds me of the Halloween “let’s play” lol. Well, don’t feel like a hypocrite. There are many fantasy subgenera after all. In fact, dark fantasy is more closely related to horror than the others. Wow, you’re a lot further into your dark fantasy story than I am but I just started this year so…

And by dark I mean “black hole” dark, heavily inspired by Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce, and Robert W Chambers.

I am familiar with these writers 🙂 Unfortunately, when I told a family friend I write dark fantasy she was like “OMG! Like Twilight? I love those movies!” Yeah, my stories are romantic if you enjoy cannibalism and body horror. Not sure how dark my novel will turn out but its gritty, bloody, surreal, and modern (well, if you consider the 90’s modern).

However, if I had to choose which album has the strongest songs, I’d have to say that Wrecked is a good one :3 That, and all of Watt’s contributions on KMFDM’s “Nihil” album really made it stand out as a gem.

Hell yeah! “Wrecked” “Book of Tequila” and “My Sanctuary (Spent Sperm Mix)” are awesome! Nihil is one of my favorite KMFDM albums along with Symbols and WTF. Opium is interesting but I only liked “Fix Me Up” “Penetration” “The Smell” and “Cuntboy” (especially Cuntboy).

Well, thanks for answering my questions and the writing resources, LM! Can’t wait for the web series and best wishes on writing your novel.

Cheshire Cat Studios is the home of what we hope is a mix of artistic integrity and dry humor. We share a passion for movies, games and other mediums but are looking to spread our reach into more original content in the future: investigative videos, satirical comedies, and animated podcasts. We like to think that we approach topics with a down to earth, analytical viewpoint and don’t play favorites.